Tag: about houses

You might have noticed: we, Hagen and me are restoring an old house here in Fitou for our daughter Isabell and her husband Dick.
Isabell and Dick helped as often as possible and together we did all the planning but currently they are travelling the world.
The goal is to have to house at least to 80% ready when they are back end of March next year. That’s an ambitious goal and we, Hagen and me, are constantly “fighting” about the seriousness of this deadline, but we still love each other 🙂 We have very different approaches to time frames and how we calculate them. I am often too ambitious, Hagen is more conservative and at the end, we mostly meet us in the middle. Continue reading “Agile restoration”

13 tutorials around the topic of house restoration, campaigning and publishing have been written

a glossary, in which specific terms are explained, ease the access to the topic

We worked with experts in the field of restoration, heritage and preservation, with people who are living in old houses, who are restoring their own houses, with historians and people who were just curious to explore their neighborhood. Some of our partners could involve municipalities in their local work as they saw the chance to value local treasures, such as houses, the knowledge and engagement of local people.

When we started the project, we had such unmeasurable aims like

to sensitize inhabitants and local people about their direct impact on their environment regarding historical relations to their place

to sensitize people of old and young generations about the worth of traditional manual skills

to develop a basic understanding of house constructions and efficient use of material to maintain houses in their original character

to convey respect for the architecture, develop a deeper sense of taste

As described above, we involved a divers mix of people in this project. Some of them were already conscious about the values of old houses, during various occasions they showed and explained their work, and this was in a way enlightening for those which never ever thought seriously before about sensitive restoration. However, the main killer argument is the financial and time effort you have to take into account when starting a restoration project. We already restored three houses mainly by ourselves. It’s not really easy to make a balance. It all depends on your skills and willingness to learn, your time budget. If you can do a lot by yourself, you only need time, which is worth money, of course 😉 But you pay yourself with new skills, fun and pride.

Old houses often have a very clear, easy structure. Former builders used materials from the region, what was easy available for them. This is an advantage today as you can re-use these old materials, which is also more sustainable and ecological. And in this way you also keep the character and charm of an old house.

There is a lot help available, at least in every country we discovered a big willingness to support those people who want to restore their house with free advice. Well, there is seldom monetary support.

However, most of the people restore a house once in their life, to spend their life there. This should be worth a fortune on thoughts, time and love.

Sounds a bit romantic considering that old houses are very often unaffordable or, to the other extreme, abandoned in many villages and cities around Europe, that many governments and banks prefer support for new buildings rather for the restoration of old one’s. On first look, it’s easy made money by selling a piece of land, divide it in plots and build new houses. This also requires a new infrastructure and thus it leads to urban sprawl of our environment. A good balance between old and new would be good but it seems to be very complicate to think in a long term when it comes to local development.

Anyway, this project was a very interesting experience and the contacts we made will support our next “old house restoration project”.

We started another European project a few weeks ago, it’s about old houses. Everyone who knows me probably smiles now, because I love old houses!

This is one reason why we, Isabell and me, wrote a project proposal and applied for funding. Another reason is, that old houses are witnesses of our culture, of our identity, but in our world they are outnumbered, often not respected, going to be destroyed to make place for modern houses.

In some countries, mostly in not so developed ones, a new house is also often a status symbol.

In developed, richer western countries, old houses are becoming more and more a luxury good. Travelling around the world, you will find outstanding old houses, renovated by every trick in the book.

More often you will find old houses renovated to dead (you can’t even imagine that the house is 100 years old) or went to rack. People who still live in such houses, laugh about people like me, who appreciate this old stuff. They are just waiting for the houses to collapse to build a new one on that spot.

The reason is often that people just do not know how to restore by using old techniques and materials. The old handcrafts are declining, less people are asking for these services.

It’s a bit ironic. Most people wish to find something different, something typical when we travel, and people looking for such “authentic” places and services are not few.

In our project we are going to record the complex history of old houses, the architecture, the construction, the social history (who built it and who lived in that house), the used materials. As seven European countries are involved, we will start building a database of vernacular architecture. And most interestingly, we will include experts to explain how to use “old” materials and learn old techniques. Maybe in that way we can preserve these handcrafts, help people to think more about their living environment and get deeper into their history.

And last but not least, we want to develop a sense of taste while building and living.

As you probably might know, I love old houses. I love to unearth the little secrets hidden in a house, explore how it was built, the materials used and of course, I love to restore it. It was obvious to create a European project out of this love and so I did. I wrote down the idea and searched for partners in Europe who might be interested in doing that project. We are a great team with very interesting people: an expert who is responsible for the plaster restoration of the Alhambra in Granada, a director of the biggest school complex in Ankara, someone who is specialized in laser scanning buildings (and boats) for restoration projects, vocational educational providers, a university which aims to educate managers in cultural heritage.

The first time we applied, which was two years ago, we failed. We were not precise enough in terms of the educational benefits. But we did not abandon the idea and started re-writing the proposal. The whole time doing that I was thinking of how I would write a business strategy and that pattern I laid over the application form requests. Isabell helped me to find the right words and we got it!

We begin this project in November and the result will be a digital repository of old houses which are homes today. That repository will contain the social history, architectural styles, attributes of the used materials. On top, we will have little online courses, where people can learn restoring techniques. Experts in the fields of house building and protection will support local people in collecting these information.

It’s not a cakewalk to organize and manage such a project with institutions from seven European countries, but thanks to the Internet, it’s easier. We use Development Seed’s Open Atrium platform for that, as we use that environment also to manage the task of our clients. Configured in a good way, according to the level of our users, that platform is intuitive to use even for those, who are not working every day in such a way.